


Commission: An Innocent Fetish

by Ticklesforyou



Category: Fairy Tail
Genre: Awkward Sexual Situations, Bondage, F/M, Fantasy, Innocence, Lolicon, Loss of Innocence, Magic, Puppy Love, Questionable Consent, Romance, Sex Magic, Sexual Content, Sexual Experimentation, Sexual Fantasy, Shotacon, Tickling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:07:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23702047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ticklesforyou/pseuds/Ticklesforyou
Summary: Wendy Marvell, separated from her companions in Fairy Tail, encounters a young boy in Edolas. And together, the two of them start to experience certain... desires.
Relationships: Wendy Marvell/Original Male Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 10
Collections: Commissions by Ticklesforyou





	Commission: An Innocent Fetish

The city of Magnolia in the Kingdom of Fiore, a quiet and peaceful place to live, save for the wild and rambunctious wizard guild at its center. It is here that our story would normally begin. But a strange event occured recently that pulled every member of Fairy Tail out of Magnolia by force and sent them not only into a separate country, but to a completely different world: Edolas. And that… is where our story diverges from what you know. Because in an alternate time, things did not happen the way you remember. For after a hole opened up in the sky and the entire Fairy Tail guild vanished, its newest member, Wendy Marvell, was separated from her companions while flying through the Anima en route to Edolas when the group was attacked by unknown assailants. Now completely alone, Wendy finds herself in the middle of who-knows-where with no idea how to reunite with her comrades. And that is where this story begins.  
____________________________________________________________________________

“Carlaaaa! Natsuuuu!” A teary-eyed young girl wandered through a dark, fog-infested landscape that seemed to go on endlessly. Initially her calls had been quiet and choked, but as she grew more and more terrified, they became loud and desperate. “Lucyyyy! Happyyyy! Anyoooone!” There was no response. The void seemed to devour her cries as well as everything else. Her nose, for example, couldn’t pick up anyone’s scent, and she became deathly terrified that even Natsu wouldn’t be able to track her through the Anima.

With no other recourse, the girl walked and walked and walked. “Please… please don’t leave me here…” She was on the verge of losing hope and collapsing to the ground when she caught a glimmer of light ahead. “Natsu?!” She ran toward that light, praying to find the dragon slayer’s fire at the end of it, but instead she emerged from the fog into daylight. “Where… where is this place?...” Wendy had emerged into what appeared to be a sleepy village of some sort. The Anima had disappeared behind her, and there was no sign that anyone nearby had noticed anything out of the ordinary. 

The village was a quaint place. Under other circumstances, she probably would’ve thought it a lovely sight. There were only a few people scattered about, but they all had smiles on their faces, waving to each other as they went about their daily business. If anyone knew of any sort of ongoing crisis--such as a randomly appearing or disappearing wizard guild--no one here seemed to be concerned about it.

That, however, did nothing to reassure the young girl. It only reaffirmed to her that she was well-and-truly lost. That feeling mingled with the feeling of relief at having escaped from the Anima and produced guilt at daring to feel happy for herself while her friends could be in danger. Her buckling knees finally gave way, and she collapsed to the ground in the middle of the road through the village, crying loudly as all the loneliness and fear poured out of her at once.

“Are you alright?” After she had laid there for some time, a young boy around the same age as her approached. He had bright blue eyes and short green hair. His appearance was disheveled but not unpleasant, the mark of a boy from a poor family who nonetheless tried to take care of himself. He wore a faded red shirt and purple shorts that looked ripped at the knees like they might’ve once been proper pants.

Wendy was immediately consumed with embarrassment. Crying out in public like this… she must’ve looked ridiculous. “Y-y-yes, I’m f-fine,” she lied, wiping the tears away and sitting up. “I’m just a b-b-bit lost.”

The boy held out a hand with a small smile on his face. “Well, maybe I can help you. I know this village pretty well.” He said it like he knew she wasn’t from here, but that only made sense. This place gave off the sort of everybody-knows-everybody vibe that would cause a person to recognise someone out-of-place. 

“Oh, no, y-y-you don’t have to…” The dragon slayer didn’t want to cause random trouble for a stranger and started to politely decline, but she caught herself when she realized that sooner or later if she wanted to reunite with her friends, she would have to ask someone for help eventually. So after mulling it over for a moment, she changed her answer with a bow. “...I mean… Yes, please, I really need it.”

“Of course!” the boy responded. “It’s no problem at all!” His hand was still hanging in the air, and he didn’t move it until Wendy looked up with an apologetic smile and took it, letting him help her to his feet.

What Wendy didn’t know--couldn’t have known--was that the boy’s gesture was not done out of any gentlemanly kindness. Certainly when he’d seen an unknown girl crying in the middle of the street, he _had_ wanted to help her--that was no lie. But there was another, ulterior motive. Wendy was currently wearing her trademark sleeveless green dress (yes, she was wearing that at the beginning of the Edolas arc; I checked), having not yet seen any need or reason to switch into the long-sleeved red disguise she would have later adopted had things not gone awry in this timeline. The boy had noticed this, and though he felt guilty for doing it, he stared at the girl’s shoulder as she reached up to take his hand, hoping to catch a glimpse of what was underneath, but alas, her arm did not stretch up high enough for that.

What he noticed instead was the mark on it--a truly infamous mark in Edolas. “Fairy Tail…?!” he mumbled under his breath, wide-eyed.

The blue-haired girl’s breath caught, and she suddenly grabbed the boy’s hand with both of hers as if pleading with him. “You know my guild?! Do you know where they a-MPH?!” 

But the boy cut her off by shoving his other hand over her mouth and shushing her. “Are you nuts?!” he half-whispered, half-yelled. Then with a paranoid look around, he positioned himself to hide the mark on her arm from anyone else who might be nearby. “You can’t just let everyone see that symbol! Are you trying to get arrested?!”

Wendy gave him a frightened, mystified look. She, of course, had no idea what he was talking about, but it sounded like the boy was worried about her for some reason. So she didn’t resist his rough treatment despite how much the sudden change in his demeanor scared her.

The boy, in turn, moved the hand away from her mouth and over to her back instead. “Come on, this way. You need to get somewhere more private. Come to my house for a bit, okay?” When the girl nodded, choosing to trust the sincerity in his tone, the boy led her to a nearby home, staying close to her shoulder and continuing to hide it with his body as much as possible until they opened the door and went inside.

Like the rest of the village, the house was a modest little place, far from extravagant and with a general air of being run-down yet also lived-in and homely. The few furnishings, such as they were, were marked up with generations worth of family affection, such as the table with a toddler’s drawings on it and the support-beam covered with growth-markings. Nor was there a scrap of dust to be found anywhere despite the fact that everything looked like it could fall apart at a moment’s notice.

Wendy had just barely registered this when the door closed behind her and the boy let out a loud sigh of relief. “Seriously, what’s wrong with you?” he asked tiredly. “You can’t just broadcast that you belong to a Dark Guild in public.”

“Dark Guild?! What?!” Wendy, completely unable to process the discrepancy between the boy’s words and her experience, demanded an explanation. And thus began a somewhat lengthy conversation where the two exchanged information about long-term plot.

To summarize for those of you in the real world who’ve long forgotten the story of Fairy Tail’s adventures in Edolas, in this world all Wizard Guilds were forbidden. The Fairy Tail of this world was, as a result, technically a dark guild because guilds as a rule weren’t supposed to exist. The reason for this was because magic was a limited resource in Edolas, and as such, none were supposed to use it without the government’s express permission. But Fairy Tail remained as the only guild to still use magic in defiance of governmental authority, and thus, the only Dark Guild in Edolas.

Hence, it was highly dangerous for a person with a Fairy Tail tattoo on her shoulder to go wandering around in public wearing a sleeveless dress.

Wendy in turn explained everything about her situation to the boy. About how she and the version of Fairy Tail she belonged to were from a completely different world, and that her guild had been essentially kidnapped because of some nefarious scheme. It was comparatively a much harder story to accept than the one the boy had told her, but when she demonstrated that she could use magic without magic tools, he had no choice but to believe her.

This is, of course, a gross oversimplification of how the conversation progressed. In reality, Wendy was so distraught over being alone in a world that apparently hated her that she broke down crying twice. Finally, the boy got up, raised a fist and declared, “Don’t worry! I, Carn Checkerton, will do everything I can to help you find your friends and get home!” 

The pose was silly, the statement corny, but his passion and sincerity got through to the dragon slayer. Her sad face shifted into a smile, a small and tearful one but the first she’d had since arriving in this world. “Thank you so much!”

Carn was taken by that smile for a minute, feeling his heart throb. But a moment later, he heard the front door opening--by this point they were sitting it was passed for the living room--and exclaimed as quietly as he could, “Uh, oh, my parents! If they find you here, they’ll report you!” He took her hand quickly and half-led, half-dragged her away. “Quick, this way! Hide in the attic!”

A voice called out from a separate room, “Carn, is that you?”

“Yeah, mom,” he called back, getting on a chair and opening a door in the ceiling to let down a staircase. “I’m just, uh, playing with some toys.”

“Well, wrap it up, we’re going to have dinner soon,” the mother called back.

Wendy rushed up the stairs at Carn’s urging, and the door closed behind her with the boy adding, “They’re gone most of the day, so I’ll come get you tomorrow.”

From there, Wendy spent a long night in that dark room. It was not uncomfortable--there happened to be a bed up there--but it was very lonely. She cried herself to sleep that night and was very hungry up until Carn opened the door and came up again the next morning. 

“I brought food!” he declared, showing off some bread, eggs and bacon that looked quite high quality compared to everything else in the house. “My mom’s the best, and I’ve learned a lot about how to cook from her.”

Wendy accepted the plate and silverware without any particular joy, but when she put the bread to her mouth, she perked up. “Oh wow, this is delicious!” She gobbled it all down with the widest smile she’d had thus far, leaving the cook quite pleased with himself.

When she was finished, he gestured over to the stairs. “Come on; you shouldn’t be up here all day.” As they walked back to the living room, Carn asked, “So… how are we going to find your friends? Do you have a plan?”

“Well…” Wendy said, putting a hand to her chin as she sat down next to him on the old but very comfy couch. “I suppose the first thing I need to do is change my outfit to something with long sleeves. “She looked down at her shoulder, lifting her arm up and in the process giving Carn his first view of what was underneath.

The boy’s heart skipped a beat at the sight, and although he knew she was right, he was filled with a selfish desire not to let her change out of that dress. “B-but, you look so--I mean, that _dress_ looks cute on you.” He quickly said, his face reddening as he forced out the first not-quite-wrong-but-not-fully-honest thing that came to mind.

“Eh?” The young dragon slayer’s face in turn also reddened, caught off-guard by the surprise compliment. “I, um, I mean, thank you, but I don’t think it’s really _that_ cute,” she said bashfully raising her hand up higher to scratch the back of her head. This motion, though, only made her armpit even more visible, and Carn got a bit of a nosebleed from it. “Besides, that’s not really as important as staying safe right?”

It’s important to note here that there were no girls Carn’s age in the entire village, let alone any as cute as Wendy, nor was it common for people to wear sleeveless outfits. Without knowing or meaning too, the blue-haired girl was striking home runs on all the qualities Carn had secretly wished for but rarely had. The only thing that could make this better…

But no, wait, if she changed into an outfit with sleeves, there would never be an opportunity to even try that. Shaking himself out of his reverie, Carn almost shouted. “E-e-even so, you shouldn’t have to wear something like… well like what we have here. At least let me find you something better first.” Then suddenly bumping his fist down on his palm, he changed the subject. “Wait, hold on, forget the clothes for a moment. How would you find your friends anyway? Do you know where to start looking?”

Wendy looked down with a shake of her head. “I thought I might be able to just smell them out, but I’m not as good with my nose as Natsu. ...Honestly, it might be better to just wait until he finds me.”

_!_

“Yeah, sure, that works!” Carn immediately latched onto that idea. “You’ll be safe here until your friends arrive, I guarantee it!” 

“But the last time I saw them, they were being attacked.” The girl’s expression started to darken, and her shoulders trembled. “What if… what if they’re in trouble? What if they get captured or killed?”

“Hey, no, I didn’t…” the boy looked away and rubbed his head. He hadn’t meant to make her cry again. And now… now he could only come up with one idea for how to cheer her up, and his reason for _why_ the idea came to him made him feel guilty. But he didn’t have a better plan. So he sucked in a deep breath and--  
“TICKLE ATTACK!”

The green-haired boy suddenly tackled her sideways on the couch. Before Wendy could complain, he already had her his fingers digging into her sides, sending her from tears to giggles instantly. “Hehehehey! Stop thahahahat!” Wendy grasped at the hands and tried to yank them away, but Carn reversed it on her, grabbing them instead and pulling them up over her head.

Normally, this probably wouldn’t be possible--as a trained wizard and dragon slayer, Wendy was more familiar with physically strenuous activity than Carn--but it was different while being tickled. Wendy was the type of person whose body turned to mush during tickling, rendering physical resistance difficult despite her superior strength, and the more intense the tickling was, the harder it became to fight back. 

As a result of all this, the two of them had wound up in what would be a most scandalous position if they were older. Wendy was on her back, arms forcefully held overhead, panting with tear-stained cheeks and staring up at the boy looming over her like a predator after pouncing on its prey. But Carn wasn’t thinking about how it might look. He simply stared her in the eye and asked, “Do you trust your friends?”

“Do I… trust them?” Wendy asked, slightly dazed by how assertive the boy was being and not comprehending the question as a result.

“Like, um, are they really strong,” Carn tried again, this time getting a slight nod out of Wendy. “Then there’s nothing to worry about. They’ll be fine. And they’ll find you.” 

His expression softened into a smile, and suddenly it was Wendy’s turn for her heart to skip a beat. “...Thank you,” she said, still dazed but feeling better.

“And that’s why I’m not going to let you cry anymore,” the boy continued, closing his blue eyes in an air of self-importance. “You look better smiling, and they’ll want to see you smile when they get here, right? So I’ll make you smile instead… even if I have to do it by force.” Opening one eye with a mischievous grin, as if he’d just pulled off the most clever prank in the world, he let go of Wendy’s wrists only to shove his fingers into her armpits.

Wendy went ballistic.

“YEEAAAHAHAHAHA! THAHAHAHAHAT’S NOHOHOHOHOHOT FAHAHAHAHAHAHAIR EEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE!” Her arms shot down immediately trapping Carn’s fingers beneath them, but she couldn’t get them out as long as he had her pinned like this. Of course, she could just throw him off with her magic, and it was getting harder and harder not to do exactly that, but she didn’t want to hurt him. Ultimately, unable to resist physically and unwilling to do so magically, she simply lay there and let him do as he pleased to her. 

Which is saying a lot because once he started Carn couldn’t stop.

This feeling was… strange. The sight of Wendy, this utterly adorable, beautiful girl, laughing her head off, the feeling of her skin under her fingers and the sound--the _sound_ \--of her melodious, helpless begging were driving him utterly crazy like nothing he’d ever felt before. It made him all tingly all over, particularly in his little boy parts, but he didn’t know why. Eventually, he started to feel a bit guilty, especially since he’d been at it for a good long while. So he reluctantly pulled his fingers out and leaned back into a kneeling position. 

He watched her pant, her hands moving up to clutch her shoulders as her arms stayed pinned by her side. “...Sorry… I think I went overboard.”

Wendy, eyes closed, answered honestly, “You did. _pant_ You did, but… I think I needed that.” Opening her eyes, she smiled at him, widely and unforced. “Thanks for that.” 

Time seemed to stop for Carn as the image seared into his mind. Wendy was still speaking but his heart was fluttering too quickly to process what she was saying until she looked at him with concern and asked if he was alright. “Huh? Uh, yeah, just dozed off for a moment there. What did you say?”

“I said, I’d like to stay and wait for my friends here if that’s alright.”  
____________________________________________________________________________

Several days passed after that, and Wendy had a new nickname for the boy. She called him Tickle Monster Carn, though never to his face. The boy had a tendency to tickle her to the floor and keep her there for what felt like hours at least once each day. At first, he only did it when she looked sad. But later on, he started to look for excuses to do it. And today, he’d simply dropped all pretenses when she stretched her arms overhead on the couch and said it was time for her daily tickles when he rushed at them.

That was the other thing Wendy noticed, he always went for her armpits. At first, he’d mix it up with some belly tickles, and once he’d gone for her feet. But she’d managed to wiggle away while he was doing that more than once. As previously stated, Wendy was the sort of person whose ability to resist tickling dropped considerably the more intense it was, and of course since her armpits were her worst spot, tickling them essentially rendered escape impossible. Carn had caught onto this fact and gleefully relished the additional excuse to target his favorite spot over others. And on top of that, he was getting more skilled at it. Today, for example, he managed to sit on her arms so she couldn’t cover her armpits and it tickled so _bad!_ “AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YOHOHOUR TOOHOOHOOHOOHOO GOOHOOHOOHOOHOOD AT THIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIS!” She always complained as much as she possible because it really did tickle a lot, but even so, she couldn’t stop it. 

Or rather, she could stop it with magic if she’d simply tried. She _could_ do it easily. One burst of wind and _poof_ tickling over, just like that. But she always chose not too. She _allowed_ it to happen.

This confused Wendy to some degree. It wasn’t that she enjoyed being tickled exactly. Or at least, she didn’t think she did. It was torture and she wanted it to stop, didn’t she? And yet for some reason,... she also didn’t. When Carn was tickling her, she felt… oddly safe given the circumstances. There was this warm feeling that filled her body each time, and she, well, she liked to see how happy it made him, not to mention it really did help her stop thinking about how lonely and afraid she was in this world. In fact, if she were being _really_ honest with herself, the only reason she’d exposed her armpits this time was to see if he would tickle them. ...No, because she was _hoping_ he would.

And of course it worked like a charm because he was utterly entranced by them. They were so beautiful, so vulnerable, so ticklish… The sight of them drove him _crazy_. He kept feeling guilty after these sessions because he was afraid he’d go too far and do something he shouldn’t--something that would make Wendy not like her. While he was tickling Wendy, he’d get these… _feelings_. He couldn’t put the urges into words, but he was afraid of what would happen if he let them control him.

Today, finally, was the day he went one step further without thinking. While he was tickling Wendy’s armpits, Carn found himself staring at her chest and wondering… could a girl’s nipples be ticklish? Girls didn’t show their nipples. They were a private spot. You weren’t supposed to just touch them. Sure, but, if he slipped his hands into the dress through the armholes and just tickled around at random, it would be _his_ fault if his fingers just _happened_ to touch them, right? 

The thought had occurred to him several times already, but this time, he couldn’t shake it out of his mind. His fingers slid slowly down Wendy’s armpits, under the dress and to her sides next to her undeveloped boobs. Her laughter didn’t diminish at all, this spot apparently being just as ticklish as her armpits, and that caused her not to notice what he was doing, too concerned with how much it tickled to think about where his hands were going. But then, Carn’s hands drifted inward, fondling the tiny mounds, and quickly zeroing in on the pink buds on top of them. “EEEE! HEHEHEHEHEY! WHAHAHAHAT?! WHAHAHAHAHAT AHAHAHAHARE YOHOHOHOHOHOU?!” It still tickled. It tickled so much that the dragon slayer felt like she might die. But it also made her feel warm in a very, very… _weird_ way, and that frightened her.

Up until now, Wendy hadn’t bothered struggling. After realizing how much of a Tickle Monster Carn was, she’d subconsciously accepted that staying here meant getting tickled and thusly didn’t put up much of a fight. But when the boy started touching a place he shouldn’t, she forced her tickle-weakened body to buck around as much as possible, overcoming the debilitating status effect of the tickling with willpower. However she still lacked the strength to get away with him sitting on her arms. The only tangible effect the increased struggling had was to make her dress fall up her body, showing off her panties and navel. The panties in particular caught the boy’s attention. Not just because he was seeing the underwear of the girl he was crushing on, though that was certainly part of it, but also because he could see a little wet spot on them. Why was that? Had she peed herself? But then, shouldn’t there be more of it? He started puzzling over this important mystery of early adolescence and as such-

“SKYHYHYHYHY DRAHAHAHAHGON ROHOHOHOOOOAAAAR!!!”

He failed to realize that he had finally crossed the line where Wendy would not hesitate to use her magic to escape and got sent flying cartoonishly into the ceiling.  
____________________________________________________________________________

A couple minutes later, Carn was bowing deeply before Wendy as low as he could manage. The blue haired girl was clutching her chest and looking away with her cheeks puffed out. This was the first time the village boy had ever seen her angry, and honestly he couldn’t help thinking even her pouty face was adorable. But he couldn’t say that out loud right now because if he couldn’t convince her she was sorry, she might leave. 

At first, she’d been using healing magic and apologizing to him for sending him flying. But partway through her own apologies, Wendy remembered why she’d reacted so dramatically in the first place, and as if a switch had been flipped, the positions of prostrator and prostratee had turned around.

They stayed in that position for what felt like a full minute in silence. Right as it was starting to get awkward, Wendy sighed and spoke first. “Honestly, you can’t just touch a girl’s chest like that,” she said.

“Yes, I know, I’m sorry, I got carried away,” Carn said, his green-topped head still down on the floor.

“I mean, I knew you liked tickling a little too much, but still…” 

Carn felt as if he’d been stabbed. On some level, he’d still been deluding himself into thinking that she didn’t know he was intentionally looking for opportunities to tickle her. “Y-y-yes, you’re right, I’m sorry I’m so weird…” he said, feeling like he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at how stupidly obvious he was.

“Although I suppose it’s partly my own fault for not saying anything sooner.” Thinking back on it, Wendy had never really done anything to discourage the boy from pushing the envelope. He’d acted and she’d went along with it, even thanking him for it afterwards on multiple occasions. “But still, you shouldn’t really do that sort of thing without permission,” she finished resolutely with a nod.

“Yes, you’re right, I-” A light bulb went off in Carn’s head right as he was on the verge of losing hope for any more fun with the dragon slayer in the future. She hadn’t really said she didn’t want him doing it at _all_. Only that she didn’t want him doing it without _permission_. Initially he’d been about to say he’d never do it again, but deciding to push his luck one last time, he instead corrected himself. “I-I-I’ll be sure to ask first from now on.”

Wendy nodded satisfactorily- “Well, okay, that’s good.” -before noticing the discrepancy herself. The way he said he’d ask first… That made it sound like he still planned on tickling her and touching her breasts, right? The only difference was that he would request permission before doing it. But that wasn’t something you could just ask a girl, right? So she should warn him not to bother, shouldn’t she? Yes… that’s exactly what she _should_ do… “A-a-as long as you don’t surprise me like that anymore… then okay, I forgive you.” 

_...AHHHHHH, WHAT AM I SAYING?!_ The reality of what she was doing was not lost on Wendy. She didn’t tell him “No, don’t.” The opposite, in fact, she’d essentially said, “Please do.” Why? There could be only one reason. She _wanted_ him to keep going. Yes he had surprised her, and she’d wanted it to stop because he’d surprised her, but _only_ because he’d surprised her. When Carn was touching her, she’d felt something… strange, new, different. She didn’t know what it was, but she… felt like she wanted _more_ of it, not less. The revelation that she apparently wanted a boy to play with her boobs shocked her enough to make her face beat red, and she started to enter denial mode. _No, that’s not it, it’s not like that. It’s because, uh, because I didn’t think anyone would like my boobs. Right, because they’re so small! Ahh, that doesn’t make me feel any better!_

While the dragon slayer got lost in the spiral of her own thoughts, the Edolian boy found himself in a similar quandary. _She didn’t say, “No.” So then, does that mean it would be okay if I asked? That would be so embarrassing! But… I really, really want to… Ahhh, what do I do??!_ Just because it might be okay to play with nipples if he asked her permission didn’t mean that Carn was necessarily brave enough to do so. As he slowly lifted his gaze, his face was as red as Wendy’s.

But it was precisely because he could see how red her face was that he made up his mind.

She was so cute. A literal angel. He couldn’t contain himself when he was around her. It was impossible. But if he did something without permission, she might run away from him and never look back. That thought terrified him. At the very least, he didn’t want Wendy to hate him when she left.

Carn took a deep breath, and with a trembling voice, he spoke. “I-I-In that case… M-m-ms. Wendy, I would like…” His breath caught as she looked over to him. What was she thinking with her face all red like that? Was she judging him? Was she preparing to yell at him? Was she planning to just say “No” this time and leave it at that? “...to… t-t-tickle your… boobs… please…” His words trailed off until they were mere mumbles, his face redder than a tomato, wondering what the hell he was thinking actually saying something so creepy out loud.

But Wendy didn’t judge or yell or say “No” nor did she run. She looked away, bit her lip and clutched her shoulders. And then finally… “W-w-well… s-s-since you asked nicely…” She reached up to the spaghetti straps of her dress and pulled them down her shoulders, turning her back to Carn so he wouldn’t see as she bashfully pulled her arms out of the dress, holding it up only with her hands and then started to lay down again. She stared up at him nervously, slowly lifting her arms away from her breasts, now covered by a dress that could easily be pulled down whether her arms were pinned or not, and laid them out on the floor behind her head where he could easily sit on them again if he wished.

Her face was as red as a tomato, and the display of willful vulnerability was so entirely surreal that Carn couldn’t help staring. She looked like the most beautiful, adorable thing he’d ever seen. It almost seemed a shame to take advantage. But only almost. No matter how overawed he might’ve been, he couldn’t change the fact that his fingers itched to touch her nor the heat between his legs demanding he do so for reasons unknown to him. And so, carefully, delicately, as if handling a priceless artifact, he resumed his position sitting on her arms. He reached out to the top of the dress, hesitated when Wendy closed her eyes and looked away, then proceeded to grab it and peel it back.

There before his eyes was a sight that seemed underwhelming in how ordinary it was. A chest, nipples, same as on any boy he’d ever seen. He didn’t understand why women felt the need to hide them when men were willing to go topless. ...Well, that was what the rational part of his brain thought. Yet in spite of that, he found that he couldn’t look away. His eyes took in every detail about the two tiny breasts and the rock-hard pink buds on top. It was an odd contradiction of thoughts and instincts, possibly the result of his brain trying to convince him that this was no big deal even though he knew that it certainly was.

He reached out with his fingers and started to slowly caress the edge of the breasts, circling around the perimeter, not really trying to tickle but just taking in the sensation of touching them. Even that, though, was enough to make Wendy start tittering. “Hm. Hmhm. Eheeheehee. Oh no. This feels so weird ehehe.” There was fire filling her she couldn’t deny. It scared her, yes, but she also felt a _need_ to be touched more. So she didn’t resist. In fact, the opposite. “Plehease, hurry up and tickle. This ihihis more embarrassing.” She encouraged him to get on with it already.

The boy complied with the request, wiggling his fingers, slowly at first and then increasing speed. Wendy’s titters turned to giggles, those giggles to chuckles, and those chuckles to laughs. “Ohohohohoho nohohohohoho! This, this ehehehehehehehehe feeheeheeheeheeheels sohohohohohoho weheheheheheheheheird!” She kept saying that, and yet still, she wasn’t asking him to stop. Carn was emboldened by it. Yes, it was weird. But she liked it. And he liked it. So he picked up the pace even further and finally touched the gems at the peak of the little boobies. Instantly Wendy let out a shriek as if he’d touched her armpits. “NOHOHOHOHOHO, NOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOT THEHEHEHEHEHEHEHERE! IHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIT TIHIHIHIHIHICKLES SO MUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUCH!” 

She squirmed just a little bit at having this spot tickled, enough for her dress to ride up again, but her limbs quickly turned to jelly again and this time she didn’t willpower her way through to struggle harder. Again her panties became visible along with the wet spot on them, and again Carn wondered about it, but he decided not to let it distract him--even he knew it was bad manners to ask about a girl’s pee. Although the vague question of whether or not it might be connected to why _his_ secret spot felt weird lurked in the back of his mind.

Regardless, he shook it off and focused all his attention on Wendy’s nipples. He wiggled his fingers against them, flicked them, pressed into them like bellybuttons and analyzed Wendy’s reactions to each. The hopeless laughter was a constant no matter what he did, but there were yips and moans of surprise mixed in every time he switched tactics that he found amusing. He took back his initial thoughts at the sight of her boobs; there was _definitely_ something different, something _special_ about a girl’s nipples that made them enchanting. They looked prettier, they felt prettier, they made Wendy laugh prettier…

_Wait… Is this what love feels like?_

The thought struck him suddenly, but he shook it off. Carn was too embarrassed to think about stuff like that. Plus, he thought, in his youthful naivety, that he’d felt love before and this was not it. But just as with his curiosity about the “pee”, the thought continued to lurk in the back of Carn’s mind as he drifted deeper and deeper into what any more experienced person would’ve declared “lust.”

Wendy, on the other hand, had no idea what she was feeling at all at this point. Tickles, yes, that was true, but there was _more_. She felt butterflies in her stomach, and ache in her chest, and throb in her lower body. Did she need to go to the bathroom? She felt like she needed to go to the bathroom, but also… no, that… that wasn’t right. The more Carn played with her breasts, the more she felt like something was happening, but she didn’t know what. It was scary, but she also didn’t want it to stop. She felt like she couldn’t _let_ it stop--like she’d already passed some point of no return. So she laughed, those laughs mixed with moans, and her body started to move again, but not in the way a body struggles from tickles. Her back arched and thrust her chest outward, as if trying to press harder into the hands abusing it. Her legs spread wide, and she could feel her dress sliding further up her belly. She started to belatedly think that maybe this was going too far, and her begging started to reflect that. “CAHAHAHARN! CAHAHAHARN! WAHAHAHAHAHAIT! S-S-S-SLOHOHOHOHOHOW DOHOHOHOHOHON! PLEHEHEHEASE, I CAHAHAHAHAN’T AH, AHHH, I CAHAHAHAHAHAN’T-T-TAHHH!”

Carn in turn found it getting harder and harder to keep her arms pinned down. Out of nowhere, Wendy’s body had found the strength to move, and he didn’t know what to make of it. She wasn’t trying to get away, but if she kept going like this, she would anyway. And he didn’t want to let her escape without giving her a grand finally, so he started shifting his tickling fingers back and forth between her nipples and her armpits, causing the sensations to mingle and blur in the dragon slayer’s mind.

_Something happened._

Wendy didn’t know what it was, but… it felt _good_. Extremely good. Extremely strange, but extremely good.

But then it passed, and in its place. “EEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE! NOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHO! NOHOHOHOHOHOHO MOHOHOHOHOHOHOHORE! TOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOOHOO MUHUHUHUHUHUHUHUCH! CAHAHAHAHAHAHARN!” Something in her body seemed to submit more thoroughly than ever. Her limbs turned back into jelly and her arched, jumping body fell back down to the lay flat and still. As well it should because her ticklishness had skyrocketed. She didn’t know why, she didn’t know how, and at that moment, she didn’t care. All she knew was that it _really, really tickled!_ And she was ready for it to stop now.

Fortunately, Carn was paying closer attention to her words and actions this time. Seeing she was really asking to be let go, he pulled his hands away and got off of her, albeit reluctantly. Wendy panted, her face flushed. “Thank you,” she said, glad that she didn’t have to blow him away again. Though given the circumstances, it came across as her thanking him for the nipple tickles, which flustered Carn and caused him to look away.

“...More tomorrow?” he asked, unable to get more than two words out. His mouth felt dry and his hands felt sweaty, as if he was terrified of something. Why? Because he had crossed one of the lines on the path to adulthood, though he had no way of knowing that.

Wendy, by contrast, was feeling something… euphoric. Something had happened just now. Something that felt good. She didn’t know what it was, and she was afraid something might be wrong with her. But… she didn’t want to _not_ feel it again. So torn between the two desires--to press forward and to pull back--she gave a simple answer that was not an answer. “Maybe.”  
____________________________________________________________________________

For a few days after that, nothing in particular happened between Carn and Wendy. They were filled with the guilt of children who’d gotten caught with their hands in the cookie jar. They had tasted something sweet and taboo, and because of that, it was hard for them to look each other in the eye, much less bring up the topic of tickling again, and they _definitely_ couldn’t bring up the topic of Wendy showing the boy her boobs or the funny feelings they’d felt and were still feeling.

Those feelings were the fundamental source of the awkwardness between them. Carn would feel tingles in his private place every time he so much as _looked_ at the beautiful blue-haired girl, and he didn’t understand what it meant or why or if it was a good thing or a bad thing. Wendy had it even worse. She started having dreams at night of being tickled and touched by the green-haired boy, then waking up to find her panties wet with… _something_ that wasn’t pee. Neither one of them confided with the other about these bodily changes--of course they didn’t. What boy just tells a girl, “My peepee gets hard when I see you?” and what girl just tells a boy, “I have dreams about you and wake up with wet panties?” Such topics of conversation are unthinkable, so they said nothing and the awkwardness continued.

But in the end, the fact that their desires didn’t change also continued. Carn still wanted to tickle Wendy, and Wendy still wanted Carn to tickle her. And with each day that passed, they both knew it was less and less likely that Wendy’s friends wouldn’t show up and rescue her (neither one of them was willing to consider they might already be gone for good). So one day, Carn decided to do something else: something reckless that would change his life permanently. 

After three days, while Wendy was eating breakfast in the attic, Carn said, “I want to join Fairy Tail and go to Earthland _with_ you.” 

Wendy dropped her fork and her jaw as she stared at him. “Eh? But… Carn you, can’t use magic.” 

Yes, that was the fundamental factor preventing the boy from leaving here with the girl he was crushing on when her friends arrived. But he shook a finger, adopting a theatrical stance and saying, “Ah, see, that’s where you’re wrong!” Then, he pulled out something that looked like a cross between a voodoo doll and a stick figure with gems for eyes from behind his back with a “Ta-da!” “This is something I found under a floorboard in grandpa’s room. Before he died he used to use magic items, so I thought he might have some hidden somewhere. I’ve been practicing with them secretly while my mom and dad aren’t home for years. Watch.”

Holding the doll to his chest with both hands, he said, “Dark Duplication.” The dolls eyes glowed eerily and Carn’s body seemed to stretch and contract. Then suddenly it _split_ and there were three Carn’s where there had previously been one, each holding an identical doll. “See?” said one. “Isn’t it cool?” asked another. “I can be a wizard too,” finished the third.

Suddenly, something Wendy had been wondering about for a while now made sense.Why had Carn helped her back when he thought she was with a Dark Guild? Because he was just that nice? Because he wanted to tickle her? No. Or at least not by themselves. It was because he _sympathized_ with wizards.

Still, she looked down feeling something not right about it all. “What about… your family?” The elephant in the room--the one Wendy still had yet to meet--was Carn’s parents. Surely they wouldn’t like it if he just left.

The boys immediately tried to shrug it off, speaking one after the other. “They don’t need me here. Yeah, I’d miss them, but they’ll be better off with one less mouth to feed anyway. It’s a win-win.”

“You can’t say that!” Without meaning to, Carn had struck close to the heart of Fairy Tail, and Wendy, though new to the guild herself, would not stand for it. “Family is very important. You can’t just abandon them because you want to-” She didn’t finish the sentence, but exactly what she was accusing him of--leaving his house and home just to tickle Wendy--rang through loud and clear to both of them. 

There was an awkward moment of silence, and then Carn--or rather, one of the Carns, the one in the center--spoke. “That’s not it… I mean, that’s part of it, but there’s more. I want to be able to use magic and join a guild like my grandpa did. I can’t just _do_ that here in Edolas, but I could in Earthland, right?” He looked up with resolve in his eyes, his fingers clenched into fists. “My parents… probably won’t understand at first, but… if your friends explain it to them, then maybe they’ll be okay with it. I mean, it’s not like I’ll be joining a Dark Guild or becoming a criminal. I think they’ll be happy for me.”

Wendy looked at him sternly and asked, “Are you sure?” He nodded back firmly. “You really want to leave your family and join Fairy Tail?” He nodded again, just as firmly. “And you really think we can convince them to let you?” He nodded a third time, keeping his eyes locked on hers. Wendy had expected the boy to show hesitation, but he didn’t. He had thought it over and made a decision. For all his fetishes and lusts for the girl in front of him, his heart was not yet so impure that he didn’t know what was really important to him, and Wendy could see that.

After thinking it over for a bit, the dragon slayer sighed. “I guess it’s okay then. On three conditions.” She looked up at him, unusually stern but wanting to make sure he understood that she would lose respect for him if he came along but these conditions weren’t met. She held up one finger. “First, your parents have to _actually_ agree to let you come with us. If Natsu and Lucy and the others can’t convince them it’s okay, then I won’t let you come.” She held up a second. “And second, you need to promise that you’ll practice every day. I don’t want you to get hurt because you got caught up in one of our fights and couldn’t protect yourself.”

Carn nodded along with both of these and waited patiently for the third. But it didn’t come. He sat there long enough for the silence to get awkward, then slowly asked, “...And? You said there were three?”

Wendy’s face reddened. She _did_ have a third condition… but she wasn’t honestly sure she wanted to admit what it was. “Th-th-the third one’s not as important as the first two. Agree to those first.” She said, waving her hands in front of herself oddly defensively.

The boy raised an eyebrow at this, and started to sweat nervously. She wasn’t going to ask that he never tickle her again, was she? That would be the worst possible third condition he could think of. “O-okay,” he said, trying to ignore the anticipatory thumping of his heart, “I agree.”

“Good.” Wendy nodded. Then she looked down. The redness in her face didn’t drain away. In fact it worsened. “Th-th-then, the third one is…” She almost didn’t say it. She almost said, “Never mind, it really wasn’t important, forget it,” but after a bit of stuttering… “I-I-I-I-I want you t-t-to go back to h-h-h-how you were before. When y-you…” The dragon slayer mumbled the last part and the boy barely heard it. But he _did_ just barely hear it even so. “...tickled me everyday…”

Wendy had accepted it within herself. She wanted to be tickled. More specifically, she wanted to be tickled by Carn. She liked how alive he looked when he tickled her, how safe she felt giggling her fears away in his hands. She liked it when he ambushed her; he had this way of knowing when she was worried and just… making the worries go away. If there was such a thing in this world as love, perhaps this was it? She was too inexperienced to say for sure, but she felt like it must be.

Though she could barely admit her desire for tickling out loud. No way was she brave enough to admit the rest of it.

She kept her face turned down, half-hoping Carn hadn’t heard her--that she could just play it off and say, “Forget it.” “...Wendy?” Her shoulders shook at the sound of her name from his lips. Would he think she was weird for asking for that? Would he think she was childish? Would he-

“Tickle attack!”

The dragon slayer was knocked back on the bed she was seated on, her empty plate flung from her hands as her arms tried weakly, ineffectively, to protect herself from _three sets of hands_. Only one of the Carns--the real one--actually spoke, but the three worked as one to pin her arms overhead and start scribbling in her belly and armpits while he did. “Yes, yes, of course I’ll tickle you! I’ll tickle you all day if you want!” he yelled excitedly, letting out adorable “eeps” at how cute she was. The most beautiful girl in the world was _asking_ him to tickle her every day?! How could he not be overjoyed?! It was everything he could have ever hoped for!

And Wendy, finding herself on the receiving end of the most tickly attack so far was somewhere between being relieved, happy and regretting saying anything because, well… “EEHEEHEE AHAHAHAHAHA EEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE N-N-NAHAHAHAHEEHEEHEEHEE!” ...she… couldn’t speak. It tickled so much, she couldn’t speak at all. Perhaps not a smart idea to ask for tickles from the boy that was currently three boys. 

But the tickles didn’t last long. They slowed to a stop pretty quickly, and three identical faces looked away shyly. “But…” One of them--the one that had been tickling her armpits and was therefore obviously the real one--spoke hesitantly. “I… want to tickle you… in weird ways and stuff.” He didn’t know how to explain, but he didn’t need to either. She understood what he was saying. “Are you… really sure you’re okay with me… tickling you when I think like that?”

The blue-haired girl also looked away, making a little moaning, “eep”ing sound as she braced herself to say what she had to say. “I’m not okay with you doing… the _weird_ stuff without asking me first yet.” She knowingly and intentionally tagged on a word that implied that maybe, someday she would be before continuing. “But I… also want to… be tickled in weird ways and stuff… and I’d be too embarrassed to ask anyone else.” If she ever admitted what she’d let Carn do--what she wanted Carn to do--to the other members of Fairy Tail, she’d die of embarrassment. ...And she also had this nagging suspicion that some of the other members would try to murder him for it, so she _definitely_ wasn’t telling anyone else about it.

“So then…?” Carn started to ask a question, his mouth drying up as he did so. 

He didn’t need to finish. Wendy nodded. “Yes. But only if you get rid of one of the clones. I-I’ll die if you tickle me there _and_ in my armpits at the same time.”

The boy nodded and held up the doll. “Merge.” The clone sitting on Wendy’s arms stayed where it was, but the other shifted back into the original. Then, looking down at her from the side, he took in the view of the girl in the sleeveless green dress, all bound up and waiting for tickles. Although… “The dress… is a little in the way.” He said, thinking she would ask to be let up so she could pull down pull down the shoulder straps again.

But instead, and with shocking forwardness, she said--whispered really, “You could… pull it up from the bottom?” Carn reeled from that, and Wendy, perhaps in a bit of a lusty daze, continued by saying, “I don’t mind if you see my panties and stuff. You’ve already seen it anyway.” 

She was giving him permission--no--she was giving him a request to strip her dress off himself. It was surreal. So surreal that neither of them questioned their actions too deeply. They were operating on instinct at this point, so Carn grabbed the hem of her dress and slowly lifted it, revealing her panties, pulling it up to expose her belly and bellybutton and ribs--a beautiful, creamy-looking midriff he had to pause and marvel at seeing for the first time. And then. It lifted up high enough to reveal her flat chest. It didn’t stop there; Carn handed the dress off to his clone, who moved off of Wendy’s arms long enough to pull it the rest of the way off, leaving her in nothing but her panties.

“...Hey,” she said as the reality of what she’d just done sank in and she was filled with a powerful heat. “This is a bit embarrassing. Could you… take off your shirt too?”

Oh, yes of course. That was only fair, Carn thought. So both he and the clone removed their tops--the latter’s simply fading into nonexistence when it came off. 

It was around that point the magnitude of what they were doing finally hit them through the mind-numbed atmosphere, but they’d come that far already. There was no point in holding back now. So Carn, the real one--his clone’s job at this point was just to hold Wendy’s arms down and nothing more--tenderly, lovingly, bashfully brought his hands down to the dragon slayer’s adorable, vulnerable breasts. This time, he didn’t take the time to explore, his fingers drawn to the erect pink targets, touching them softly. Those touches turned to caresses, those caresses to flicks, and for Wendy, this equated to barely repressed “Eeps” turning to uncontainable giggles and from there to unstoppable laughs. “AHAHAHAHAHAHA EEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE, YES YEHEHEHEHEHES! EEHEEHEEHEEHEEHEE IHIHIHIHIHIHIT TIHIHIHIHIHIHICKLES! AH, AH, AHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Even Wendy was surprised to hear “yes” coming out of her mouth instead of “no”, so of course Carn was too. He’d believed--he’d _known_ \--that Wendy really did like him tickling her, certainly, but she’d never verbalized it _during_ the tickles. Of course she hadn’t. She had never been this hungry for it before. Several days had passed since the last session, and Wendy hadn’t realized just how much she craved Carn’s touch on this spot until she felt it again. It encouraged Carn--emboldened him--and his fingers wiggled faster and more confidently. 

Carn felt weird feelings between his legs again and, curious, he turned to see Wendy’s panties had suddenly gained a wet spot again. Neither knew what this meant, and last time they’d feared it. But this time… this time was different. Perhaps because they’d both admitted they wanted to keep exploring it, or perhaps each gained confidence from knowing the other wanted it. If it was weird, well, at least it was a weirdness they shared. So they ignored questions about what the sensation was or whether or not this was okay and just rolled with it.

However, those feelings did bring another change--Wendy’s increased “struggling.” “Woah! Woah!” Carn, sitting carefully on Wendy’s stomach as a means of holding her down, and the clone, doing everything he could to keep her arms up, found Wendy suddenly bouncing around again. Carn was beginning to think that Wendy’s escape instinct applied specifically and only to when her nipples were tickled, but that wasn’t it. Wendy’s body was responding instinctively, but not to escape. If anything, it was trying to get _more_ , ironically. Her legs spread, her feet planted on the floor and she pushed down hard enough to actually lift the sitting Carn into the air. 

The boy tickled her as much as possible under those circumstances, but felt like she was bucking more and more strongly than she did the first time, and one of her arms slipped away from the clone, gripped his wrist and yanked him downward. “WOAH!” Carn fell forward, his clone bouncing out of the way, and found his bare upperbody pressed against Wendy’s and her arms wrapped around him. 

Panting down from the ticklish giddiness, Wendy looked on with flush-faced surprise at what she herself had done/was doing and mumbled, “Uhh… got you?”

Carn stared into her eyes, mere inches away from his own, and chuckled nervously. “Yeah, you, uh, you got me. ...Was I… tickling too much?”

“Mm-mm.” Wendy said with a shake of her head. “I just… couldn’t stop myself. It makes me want to hug you, I guess.” They both realized what she’d just said a moment after the words were out of her mouth and blushed deeply. Kids don’t understand fetishes, nor do they necessarily understand the significance of wanting to strip or be stripped in front of someone special. But they understand the significance of wanting to hug someone; such is the nature of a child’s puppy love. 

The green-haired boy had no idea how to respond to this. Not that he _didn’t_ want to hug her back, but he couldn’t say it. So instead, he redirected the conversation. “W-w-well, I don’t mind, but if that happens every time, it would make tickling you difficult.”

“Yeah,” Wendy agreed, pulling one of her hands away to rub one of her nipples slowly. “I didn’t really want it to stop. I feel… hot… and tingly.” She admitted the ache in her chest as best she could with her limited comprehension. “It’s actually really frustrating that I made you stop.”

Suddenly the light of inspiration--an arguably diabolical inspiration--went off in Carn’s mind. “Wait a minute. Maybe… maybe I could…” 

Seeing the gears turning in her crush’s mind, Wendy tilted her head and asked curiously, “What? What is it?”

“Well… It sounds a bit creepy, but… maybe I could tie you up?” Carn said, then hurried to explain himself. “I mean, well, I was just thinking, if you were tied up, you couldn’t stop me. No wait, that still sounds creepy. I mean, you wouldn’t have to worry about accidentally making it harder for me to tickle you. And! And, it would also give me a chance to show off another spell. I have a magic item--a rope--that you’re suppose to be able to control to catch bad guys, so I was kinda hoping to show you how that works anyway, so…” 

He trailed off as he realized he was rambling. And Wendy could understand why; it was a bizarre and awkward idea. “I don’t know…” she said slowly. “Being tied up sounds a bit scary.”

“Well,” Carn responded just as slowly, “I mean… I promise I still won’t do anything weird without your permission so… do you trust me?”

“...I-” 

**“WWWEEENNNDDDYYY?! Where are yyyooouuu?!”**

“Wendy! Are you here somewhere?”

“We’re going home now, Wendy!”

“Please tell me where you are, child!”

The conversation was interrupted by a roar and a series of shouts from below from several familiar voices. Both kids, still hugging in their underwear, froze and then jumped off of each other as Wendy half-yelled, half-whispered, “AAAAHHH, THEY’RE HERE! QUICK, GET DRESSED, GET DRESSED!” They tossed their clothes on as quickly as possible and merged Carn’s clone back into the orignal. 

This particular incident ended, unfortunately, in what we of the adult world would call a cock-block. But neither Wendy nor Carn was satisfied with that, and it would not be the last time the subject came up. No, no, far from it. If anything, this was where their story actually begins: with the words Wendy whispered to Carn right before they rushed over to the attic door. “Wait… I do. I trust you. So… please, come to Fairy Tail with us. Okay?”  
____________________________________________________________________________

The city of Magnolia in the Kingdom of Fiore, a quiet and peaceful place to live, save for the wild and rambunctious wizard guild at its center. Yet today an usual calm descends upon the Fairy Tail Guild as Wendy and its newest member, Carn Checkerton, head out to “train,” refusing offers of help from Natsu, Grey, and all the other training-eager guildmates. Even Carla was left behind as she had been every other time.

Natsu stared with narrowed eyes as the entrance closed behind them, frozen in mid-grapple with the nearly-nude Grey Fullbuster. “Somethin’ smells fishy here.”

“Really?! Does that mean it’s dinnertime?!” his blue-cat companion piped up, completely overreacting to the word “fishy” as usual.

The white Exeed chided him immediately. “Don’t be a fool, tomcat; he means that something’s off with poor little Wendy.”

“Whaddya mean?” Grey asked mystified, slowly pulling out of his fight with Natsu. “They’re just training, right?”

The conversation spread throughout the guild hall rapidly, with nearly everyone in the room throwing in their own two cents: Elfman praising Carn for working hard to become a “real man,” Juvia worrying over the possibility that they were plotting to steal her “darling Grey,” Mirajane subtly hinting at something scandalous, and Lucy rebuking her for it before yelling at Grey to put some clothes on (which of course he hadn’t realized he’d taken off, as usual).

It was Mirajane’s suggestion that garnered the most concern, though, as several of those who knew Wendy well--specifically Carla and Lucy--started to wonder if maybe… maybe those two were discovering things together they really shouldn’t be discovering yet…  
____________________________________________________________________________

The concern was well-founded but while the Fairy Tail members were still deliberating over what to do about it several hours later, the deeds in question were already underway. Deep in the forest away from the prying eyes of curious friends, family and strangers, Carn and Wendy really did practice Carn’s use of magic.

“Rope Bind.”

Yes. They really did practice it. They just weren’t doing it… _conventionally_. 

Wendy was secretly beginning to think being a tickle maniac ran in Carn’s family. All the magic tools he’d found in his grandpa’s secret stash were weirdly well-suited to it. To start, there was a mirage spell-imbued mirror that hid a room-sized area from view, so that even if someone wandered by, they wouldn’t see or hear what was going on with the two kids. There was a magic rope which, when used, tied Wendy’s wrists to an overhanging branch, giving Carn free reign to tickle her standing up. There was even a magic box that seemed to have Requipping powers like Erza’s, only Carn used to strip off Wendy’s dress without tearing them or anything. Also made putting them back on when they were about to be caught a simple matter.

And these were just the _set-up_ tools. As Wendy nervously, eagerly fidgeted, she eyed the array of do-dads spread out on the ground trying to decide which ones to tell Carn to “practice” with today while he waited with his arms spread wide. 

Some time had passed since they’d started this. Of course their opportunities were split between jobs and adventures, but overall, they seized every chance they could to come out and have tickling sessions like this, so Wendy they were both thoroughly acquainted with the drill by now. It had actually been a little while since their last round and the dragon slayer was feeling a bit daring, so she gestured with her chin over to the cloning doll. “That one. See if you can make it all the way to six this time,” she said, fully aware of what all those clones would do once summoned.

Carn in turn could feel something down south becoming as stiff as wood at the mere _suggestion_. Wendy was apparently up for a _real_ tickling today, and he relished in that. “If you’re sure,” he said, picking up the doll and holding it out. “Dark… Duplication…” He dragged the spell’s name out, focussing with all his might to try and break his previous record. His body appeared to twist and stretch, pull and contract until suddenly there were… exactly five Carns. “Darn,” they said, looking around at each other. “Still didn’t make it to six.”

“Aw, d-don’t worry about it; you’ll get it s-someday,” Wendy responded, stuttering a bit and instinctively backing away from the squad of ticklers in front of her. Her legs were rubbing together in anticipation and she _already_ felt the wetness in her panties. She’d been getting used to it bit by bit. Of course it was still extremely embarrassing, but… it was a good embarrassing. Not like being on stage in a weird outfit; more like when being praised for a job well done.

The clones shrugged their shoulders and started to approach her--to surround her--nonchalantly. Or at least they tried to, but… “Oh well, guess we’ll just have stay like this for an hour or two to build up more endurance to the spell’s strain.” ...despite the coolness of his movements and the seamlessness of his speech, Wendy noticed a small bulge in his--their--pants. She didn’t know what it was--frankly she was _scared_ to know what it was and never pointed it out--but she’d realized it was a giveaway of sorts. When that bump appeared, she was screwed. It was as simple as that; there was no escape now.

...Well, technically she _could_ still escape easily if she used her magic, but she didn’t want to.

The five boys, all with the same green hair and blue eyes, raised 50 identical wiggling fingers with identical hungry grins, making Wendy start “Eep”ing and giggling even before they touched her. They started closing in, making the girl try to wiggle away from whichever was closest at the time, but being completely surrounded meant there was no good direction to retreat to, resulting in her dancing and wiggling around in circles.

Finally the fingers made contact. “EEEhehehehehe!” It was just a quick tickle on her side from one clone. Then another quick tickle from a different one struck her belly for three seconds. The clones took turns making her squeak and flinch and bounce. Carn had learned by now that although hard tickling zapped Wendy’s strength, short bursts made her bounce and struggle in the most adorable way possible, so he had a real blast poking and prodding her from her armpits down to her hips for several minutes. He and his duplicates mixed in quiet “kitchy, kitchy, coos” and “tickle, tickle, tickles” from every direction to make it that much more maddening.

In the end, though, Carn was a true tickling sadist at heart and could not be satisfied with just teasing. So finally, he--the one directly in front of Wendy, of course, hushed his clones and held up his hands over Wendy’s armpits. Then he began a countdown. “Threeeee…” The other clones took up positions, fingers ready and wiggling. “Twoooo…” the hands began their slow descent. “Onnnnneeee…” Wendy bounced and pleaded with a helpless silly look on her face.

Carn never said “Zero.” There was no need. The army of hands touched down and began to drive the girl crazy. There were two hands on either side of her tummy, two caressing and tickling each undeveloped breast, and one of each of the original’s hands digging into her armpits. The sensation was so overwhelming that Wendy drifted in and out of silent laughter. She felt that now-familiar heat in her body build up to it’s breaking point, push past it, and fill her with an indescribable pleasure… followed by an increase in sensitivity that was far too much for her to bear.

Now would be the time Wendy seriously asked for mercy under normal circumstances, but right now, she couldn’t speak. And there was an unspoken understanding between Carn and Wendy--if she couldn’t speak, she didn’t get to say “No.” And she couldn’t complain because, well, she was the one who picked the tool Carn could use to drive her to this point. Her own fault. Nothing to do but bear it until the green-haired boy was thoroughly satisfied.

Besides… there was a _reason_ why Wendy would, once in a while, choose to be pushed past her limits.

As the five Carns continued to tickle her, wiggling their fingers along her breasts and armpits and tummy, driving her so far over the moon she could barely breath, the heat started to build up inside her again. Wendy had learned about it the hard way the first time Carn did this to her--the unspeakable joy that filled her at the height of the tickling… that wasn’t the end of it. There were _higher_ levels beyond that if she allowed the punishment to proceed past the point where she couldn’t stand any more. 

Carn, for his part, knew that when Wendy wanted to be tickled like this, she was in the mood for a _real_ tickling and obliged her by holding nothing back. All five of him whispered “tickle, tickle, tickle”s and “coochie, coochie, coo”s into her ears. He savored the feeling of her soft armpits under his fingers, switching between spider wiggling to up-and-down stroking to side-to-side stroking to round-and-round circling to in-the-center digging as was his whim at any given moment. The bulge in his pants was growing a bit painful, and he wanted to touch it, but if he did that, he’d have to take one of his hands off Wendy, and he wasn’t ready for that yet.

This continued for what seemed like forever to Wendy and not long enough to Carn. Then Wendy’s body arced, and she let out a long shriek through the tickling. The wetness in her panties multiplied greatly, and Carn knew from past experience that if he kept going past this point at full force, poor Wendy was likely to pass out. Yet if he let up, she’d regain enough control of her breathing to use the safeword. In other words, playtime was basically over. Still, he didn’t want to let up until he absolutely had too, so he and his clones slowed their fingers from a full-on attack, to a slow gentle crawl.

After two “highs” even a slow gentle crawl was too much for Wendy. After a full minute of struggling to regain her breath through the tickling, she managed to squeal out, “M-M-MEHEHEHEHEHEHEHERCYEHEHEHEHEHE! STOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOP NOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOHOW!” 

“Mercy” was the cue to stop for real, and Carn sighed a bit as he pulled back and sucked the clones back into himself. “Well?” he asked, “Have fun? You alright?”

Wendy, taking deep breaths, responded by holding two thumbs-up, then gestured to her wrists. Carn took the cue and commanded his rope to let her go and return to his side, curled up like a whip. The blue-haired girl collapsed into his arms and he gently laid her on a picnic blanket while she gigglishly held herself tight and rubbed out the tickly sensations in her armpits in nipples. The sight was glorious, Wendy lying there mostly naked massaging herself with a content, closed-eyes smile on her face, and that glorious sight reminded Carn that he had some business to take care of. “Um… excuse me for a bit, I need to go use the restroom.”

Wendy gave another thumbs-up and Carn left. By now she knew the pattern. Although Carn never said he was going to do anything other than “use the bathroom”, the fact that he always had to do it after a session combined with the visible bulge beforehand--not to mention what happened to her _during_ the session--were all very telling things. She didn’t ask, and he didn’t tell, but she had a basic idea of what he was actually doing.

That was how it was between them. Both were becoming increasingly aware that their bodies were changing, but neither one voiced it. They had chosen to simply declare this a silly, childish game, nothing more. Neither one mentioned any desires beyond tickling and being tickled. Neither brought up, for example, the fact that each had dreams of kissing the other while they slept. They were both afraid to take that next step, even though each was aware the want was mutual. ...Or perhaps only Wendy did? Carn could sometimes be dense about these things. At the very least, he probably didn’t know how much Wendy knew about what he wanted. Wendy, by contrast, was under no such delusions as to think she was really hiding anything from him.

Even so, they just didn’t take that next step--refused to openly acknowledge the depth of what was happening to them. Because they could sense that if they did, something… something would _change_ forever, and whether that something would ultimately be good or bad, they didn’t know. All they did know was that the prospect was terrifying. No. There was no need to alter this dynamic at all. Wendy was a ticklish girl who liked being tickled. And Carn was a boy who liked tickling her. That was all there was to it. That was all they would _allow_ there to be to it. It was a perfectly _innocent_ activity.  
____________________________________________________________________________

The next day, Lucy asked Wendy to go shopping with her, but Wendy declined and left with Carn once again. Once again, they went out into the forest, and performed their preparations, and once complete, Wendy stared at the array of magic tools and considered her options. “How about… the feathers this time?” She gestured with her chin to two pink feathers. 

Carn groaned and nodded. “Going with the hard one today? ...Alright.” Carn tapped the feathers with two fingers on each hand and declared, “Mind Lift.” Then he put both of the two sets of fingers to his forehead and focused on the feathers. He focused and focused and focused. The feathers jiggled a bit and lifted a few inches into the air before falling back down to the ground as Carn lowered his arms panting. “Nope. Still can’t control two at once yet.”

Wendy giggled at the sight, and gently said, “It’s alright. I know it’s your hardest tool. Go ahead and practice with just one then.”

These magic feathers were supposed to be controlled psychically, but Carn found them nearly useless. It was so much harder to control them than his other magic artifacts, but that was why they made good practice, or so Wendy kept saying. Carn believed that she _really_ chose the feathers when she wanted Carn to go easy on her. But, oh well. So be it. He tapped just one pair of fingers to his head again and focussed once more. This time, the feather lifted into the air fairly easily and darted off to Wendy’s right.

It took a fair bit of zigging and zagging to make the magic feather go where Carn wanted it too, but after a minute or two, he finally started to get a handle on it and made it start swiping around Wendy’s belly. The sky dragon slayer started giggling and moaning with a wide smile on her face, more like the kind one gets from a massage than from a tickling. “Mmmhmhm, I really lihihike the feather, Cahaharn.”

Any discontent he felt at not being able to tickle harder was washed away in light of how adorably pleased Wendy was. She swayed from side to side, her body more inclined to move when tickled softly than when tickled harshly. And whether it was trying to escape from or offer itself to the feather was open to interpretation as it appeared to be doing both and neither.

Still, these adorable distractions made the feather even harder to control, and Carn needed to maintain his focus. _Especially_ since his crush’s tummy was not his primary target. He start to swing the feather upward, overshot it to get in her neck, then swung back down, overshot again and wound up on her ribs, then carefully tweaked it back up just a little bit. Thus, he finally arrived at his destination, her breasts. 

Carn had learned something about the feather a while back. The place where Wendy _really_ wanted it was right here, on her little boobies. More specifically on her nipples. Which made this “training” ridiculously difficult given how small the targets were and how difficult to control the feather was. But the moaning giggles and declarations of, “Yes. Yes, Cahaharn, you’re, ahh, doing good!” was all the motivation he needed to try harder. The nipples; if he could just get that blasted feather on her nipples, he could make Wendy very, very happy. Just a little more… just a little… more…

The topless girl let out a loud gasp and descended into much stronger giggling as the feather finally found its mark. “Eeeeeheeheeheeheehee! Aaaaahn! Ahahaha, ha, ha, ahhheeheehee!” The sound made the boy so dazed with happiness that he lost his place again. But that was alright. He would just have to seek out those nipples all over again. And again. And again, until she had her “big happy” moment and decided she was done.  
____________________________________________________________________________

The next day, Carla asked Wendy to join her for some tea, but Wendy refused, simply saying she’d already had too much to eat that day and left with Carn once again. And once again, the array of tools lay out before her. “I think… you should use the claws today.”

Carn grinned almost malevolently at that, sending shivers of anticipation up the girl’s bare back. “As you wish, milady.” He slipped the claws--a pair of gloves with long, pointed “fingernails” on the ends--onto his hands. If the blades were sharpened, as the tool was probably intended to be, it would be a truly scary weapon, but they were blunt and harmless, hence why Carn and Wendy called them fingernails. What made this magic tool special was a spell called, “Phantom Touch.” Once activated, any sensation inflicted by the claws, be it pain or tickling, would continue for several minutes on the spot they touched afterward. 

Wendy was already squirming as her personal tickler approached her with his catlike hands. She started giggling preemptively, though not in anticipation of the tickles. “Hehe, you look like you should have cat ears and a tail.” 

Carn paused for a moment with redness on his cheeks. Then he jumped at her and began raking the claws along her belly and up her sides. “Oh is that so?! I’ll tickle that idea right out of your head!”

“Eeek! Heeheeheeheehee! No! I’m sorryyyheeheeheeheeheehee!” The girl started giggling out apologies as fast as she could, but the claws were faster, leaving a ticklish trail behind them. After covering her ribs and breasts, it felt like they were everywhere at once. Except for one special location. “Eeheeheeheehee! Noooo! Dohohohohohohon’t!”

The boy held the claws over her armpits and started wiggling them in the air where she could see. She laughed up a storm from both the anticipation and the incessantly ticklish sensations the magic had left behind everywhere else. “Tiiickle, tickle, ticklllle! I’m gonna get your armpiiiiits! They can’t escape from meeee!” Carn sang, slowly lowering them down. “Threee… Twoooo… One!”

Wendy screeched as her armpits were struck, and any futile resistance her body was attempting drained out of her. Carn was very thorough with his claws. He wanted her to feel them tickling every single nerve of her mesmerizingly beautiful armpits all at the same time. And when her laughter started to get quieter, he left the armpits just long enough to renew the ticklish effects on the rest of her body.

The girl’s body felt electrified with tickling. It was as if she could feel the claws in her pits being transferred throughout the rest of her being. The tingling in her legs was slower to build up during cases like this, when the tickling was so thoroughly focused on that spot, but it was building up. She started to gasp and moan amid her laughter, and her body shifted from motionless to desperate as it always did. 

Seconds passed, then minutes. Wendy felt like hours of slowly getting hotter and hotter passed, though it was probably closer to ten minutes. Then finally, she moaned loudly and went over the edge, calling for mercy before Carn could keep going into super-ticklish time. She panted and smiled at him, and said, “Mmm, those things are terrible,” in the most content tone imaginable.  
____________________________________________________________________________

The next day, Natsu and Gajeel asked Wendy to join them for some dragon slayer vs. dragon slayer sparring, and in order to further cut off the odds of her running off with Carn again, several of Fairy Tail’s other magic-item wielding wizards offered to train him instead. But Carn turned red at the prospect of anyone else seeing his array of tools and almost ran out of the guild dragging Wendy behind him while she called out an apology and offered to join in some other time.

Perhaps it was the closeness of the close call that made Wendy feel a bit bolder than usual today. Rather than ask for a tool that Carn was particularly skilled with or needed practice with, she picked the one that was secretly her favorite. It was a blue gemstone with the symbol of the wind on it. 

Carn groaned a bit internally but picked it up as requested. “Okay, okay, if that’s what you want. Cyclone Prison.” He held out the gemstone and a whirlwind slowly formed around Wendy, starting at her feet and traveling up her body until she was completely enveloped. The air slipped into every nook and cranny, caressing her softly yet vigorously like a billion paintbrushes. If it was localized in one area, it wouldn’t be particularly intense, but spread out as it was over her feet, knees, thighs, tummy, ribs, sides, breasts and armpits, it all added up to a very ticklish sensation and left her laughing loudly.

Carn didn’t especially like it because it didn’t give him much to do and muffled both his abilities to see and hear her, but Wendy being a wind-based magic user thought it was amazing, so he was willing to indulge her… Well, that’s what Carn thought, but the truth was, Wendy liked it for _other_ reasons. For one thing, being the wind dragon slayer meant that she could “eat” some of this tickling wind, and when she did, it would give her a funny, fluttery feeling, as if she was being tickled inside _and_ outside at the same time. But there was also a simpler, more fundamental reason; it was because the wind had no sense of privacy and had a tendency to tickle her _entire_ body at once. All of it. Everywhere. Including the place they’d chosen not to acknowledge. 

Carn hadn’t caught on to the implications of that yet and Wendy had no intention of enlightening him. She allowed the sensation to overwhelm her with a guilty pleasure, letting Carn unknowingly tease and tickle even her most secret places, and it never took long for the “big happy” to come during this process.

This was the part where things would get fun for Carn, though. Unable to yell loudly enough for her cries of mercy to be heard beyond the wind (or so Carn claimed), Wendy only had one way to make the tickling stop: eat all of the wind. Yet, as already stated, this did not make the tickling instantly go away. Instead it would spread throughout her body, tickling her nerves from the inside. The resulting sensation was difficult to describe. It was like… having an army of ants crawling around on her but without the ants. “Eeheeheeheeheehee! It tihihihihihihickles! I cahahahahahahahan’t make it stohohohohohohop!” she would complain, and in response Carn would shrug and make things worse by adding his own fingers into the mix.

Simply sitting back and watching the girl laugh was not good enough for Carn. He wanted to get a good look at her armpits and nipples getting tickled at least a little bit, and though Wendy complained, they had agreed previously that he could tickle her as much as he wanted until the wind’s effects wore off.

Which unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how one chose to look at it) wouldn’t be for another five minutes...  
____________________________________________________________________________

And that’s how it continued. Every day for the next few days, they would leave their guildmates scratching their heads behind them every afternoon and go out into the forest to train and play, and she and Carn kept getting secretive, mischievous looks when they left the guild. And finally, someone snapped.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t Natsu.

“I can’t take this anymore! I finally found my Wendy again and she doesn’t want to spend any time with me!”

“Hey, please don’t cry. Here, you can have half of my fishie.”

“Not everything can be solved with fish, tomcat! And don’t touch me so casually!”

Carla was a cool and composed character under normal circumstances, but Wendy’s continuous unintentionally giving her the cold shoulder was finally getting to her. Happy tried to reassure her the only ways he knew how, but they didn’t go over well. ...Well, more accurately the fish didn’t, but despite her harsh words, Carla accepted the hug, desperate for any consolation at all.

The other members of their team jumped to their feet, and started to speak one by one. Natsu raged first, “I don’t get why it’s such a big deal, but making Carla cry isn’t cool! I say we go out and see what’s up.”

Lucy spoke next. “I’ve got this nagging suspicion they’re doing things they shouldn’t be, and it’s driving me crazy. I have to know what they’re doing before I can sleep peacefully at night.”

Next was Erza’s turn. “I trust in Wendy, but Carn might be deceiving her somehow. She hasn’t been the same since the day we found her with him. If it turns out to be the case that he’s doing something to her, I shall have to punish him appropriately.”

And finally Grey… asked a question he shouldn’t have. “That’s great and all, but how are we going to do it? Are you planning to just ask them what’s going on or what? I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but that hasn’t been working so far.”

Everyone froze and sank into thought. It was true that asking for details would be simple enough, but both Carn and Wendy had adamantly avoided saying anything to anyone other than, “We’re training.” Natsu and the other men of the guild had even tried threatening Carn at one point, but the boy had stubbornly--or perhaps in sheer terror--insisted that nothing weird was going on. And ever since then, the two had been getting more and more cautious about making sure they weren’t followed. Even Natsu, who _could_ follow them pretty easily with his nose, couldn’t get close to them without Wendy using _her_ nose to notice his approach. So they’d been at a bit of an impasse, unable to learn anything.

But while everyone else couldn’t decide on a course of action, Erza just put a hand on her hip, stuck out a thumbs-up and said with sparkles around her eyes, “Don’t worry about that; I’ve thought of everything. We’ll learn the truth easily with this plan.”

Natsu and Happy gave a cheer of enthusiasm, but the other three recognized that look in Erza’s eyes. It was the look she got when she came up with a plan that was utterly ridiculous. But she was the de facto leader of their group, so of course they would end up doing things her way same as they always did, leaving Lucy to sigh and lean over the table muttering, “I have a bad feeling about this…”  
____________________________________________________________________________

The next day, when Carn arrived at the Guild Hall, as if on cue, everyone in the room stood up and started panicking. “Oh noes, Wendy has been kidnapped by a Dark Guild and imprisoned in an ancient castle east of here!” Although some of the “panicking” people clearly looked annoyed or chagrined. Lucy, for example, was thinking, _There’s no way that this is going to work. Our acting is terrible, and if Wendy really was in trouble, we’d already be out there trying to save-_

“Wait, something happened to Wendy?! We have to go save her!!” 

_No way, he_ bought _that?!!!_

Carn did in fact fall for the obvious act hook, line and sinker. He could be rather dense from time to time, _especially_ where Wendy was concerned, and this was apparently one of those times. So he demanded an explanation from the rest of the guild, who said that Wendy had been kidnapped by a Dark Guild called Fake Out which specialized in making money by demanding ransoms. And apparently everyone in Fairy Tail was busy with some incredibly urgent mission or another (fighting a giant evil fishy that was terrorizing the north, for example) and couldn’t go save her seeing as she wasn’t in any immediate danger, yet they worried that if someone didn’t go to the Dark Guild soon, they would realize Fairy Tail didn’t have enough money to pay the ransom and dress her up in a banana suit! Now the only one who could possibly sneak into the castle and save Wendy was Carn, the only member of Fairy Tail not otherwise occupied with saving the world!

...It really was an obvious lie…

But Carn chalked up any inconsistencies to the bizarre personalities of his Fairy Tail guildmates. Bear in mind, he was already in another world with the biggest group of crazies imaginable. As far as he was concerned, all of this was completely believable. ...And also, he might’ve gotten a little bit giddy at the idea of being the hero who saved Wendy from peril. So after acquiring an oddly crudely drawn map showing the location of “Fake Out”, Carn set out from the guild at a run.

“Just as I planned!” Erza said with obvious pride. In fact, Wendy really was locked up in the tower marked on the map at that very second, but obviously it wasn’t the work of a Dark Guild but rather Natsu and Grey under orders from Erza.

Lucy couldn’t take the ridiculousness anymore and burst out, “What exactly is the point of all this?! How is any of this going to show us what’s going on with those two?!”

The woman knight shook a finger and tut-tutted. “What they’re doing is none of our business. This is a test of _character_. We’ll follow behind Carn and see what he tries to do when he finds Wendy all chained up in a dungeon and thinks we’re not working. And of course, if he does anything other than immediately rescue her, we’ll take appropriate countermeasures.”

“Great idea! That’s awesome!” 

Both Natsu and Grey reacted with pride in Erza’s plan, but Lucy just groaned and facepalmed. “And how exactly does that work when Wendy can smell both us and Carn coming? I mean, no matter how sneaky these two were, she definitely knows we were the ones who kidnapped her.”

…  
…  
…

“HOW COULD I OVERLOOK SUCH A CRITICAL DETAIL???!!!”

“YOU’RE SERIOUSLY JUST NOW REALIZING THIS???!!!”

And thus, the plan was declared a failure long before Carn actually reached the tower, and he was not, in fact, followed.  
____________________________________________________________________________

Carn snuck into the old decrepit tower much later that day, after running around in circles trying to make sense of Happy’s poor excuse for a map. In fact, he hadn’t really been able to use the map at all; he’d only found the tower by asking for directions from the locals.

Upon reaching his destination, he immediately felt like something was off. The outside of the tower looked old and decrepit--which made sense if a Dark Guild was using it as a hideout. When he snuck in through a stone window, though, he found that the inside was in various states of recently cleaned and not touched in decades. It didn’t look like a place a group of people lived in, or at least not for very long. Maybe this was a new base for Fake Out? But then again, on top of the inconsistency around cleanliness, there didn’t seem to be anyone here. Were they all out causing mischief somewhere?

The conclusion Carn ended up coming to was that this was the former base of a Dark Guild that moved from place to place pretty frequently and that Wendy might not even be here anymore. But when she found the tower dungeon, there she was, and the predicament she was in instantly gave him a nosebleed. She was tied up against a wall in an X and blindfolded. Her guildmates had wanted to make the kidnapping look “real” without compromising Wendy’s modesty, so of _course_ Erza had reasoned that it would be best for Wendy to be changed into a bikini and cat ears. (How they did it without Natsu and Grey looking at her is a mystery the two responsible for the kidnapping never explained.)

Now Wendy was a dragon slayer, so of course she knew Carn was there. She didn’t know why her guildmates did this and cried a fair bit before he arrived, but when he did, she started to get the idea. Especially since Carla would never have gone along with anything bad. Thus, although there were tearlines on her cheeks, she wasn’t upset anymore. Annoyed, yes, but not upset. 

So then why did Wendy not call out to Carn when he entered the tower? Why did she wait patiently for him to find her cell on his own without yelling for help? Why, even now, did she not say his name or even acknowledge that she knew someone was there? Well, simply put, because she was actually very curious what Carn would do if he found her like this. Would he rescue her like a dashing hero? Possibly, and it was an idea she liked, but… considering that it was _Carn_ and that she’d been in this position in front of him before, she was expecting something more… mischievous.

The idea that Carn would do something crazy was terrifying, of course, but in an exciting way. She honestly wanted to know what he would do if she didn’t give him any limitations or safewords. It was a reckless decision on her part, she knew, but she’d been discovering a little daredevil inside her ever since the day Carn first tickled her nipples--a part of her that wanted to be pushed forcefully outside her comfort zone. So she kept her mouth shut and waited for Carn to make a decision.

And sure enough, Carn could not resist a perfect setup like this. Nor did it occur to him that just because Wendy couldn’t see him didn’t mean she didn’t know he was here. Maybe he could get away with “interrogating” her for a while? He shouldn’t--he knew he shouldn’t--but he just couldn’t help himself. Besides, this was a good excuse to practice casting spells without saying the names out loud. 

Having thusly made a _perfectly_ valid excuse for what he was about to do, Carn walked into the room and made the usual preparations… which in this case only consisted of stripping off the top of Wendy’s swimsuit with magic, since she was already tied up. Wendy looked up at the sudden cold air on her nipples, which Carn was able to watch harden for the first time (they’d always been hard before pulling her dress off before). “W-w-who’s there? W-w-w-what are going to d-d-d-do to me?” Wendy pretended to be surprised, and Carn made no move to answer with his mouth. Instead, he picked up his tools… and started to use them.

The claw was the first tool, the one that left the lingering effects, and Carn combined it with the cloning tool. They were basically the worst duo in his arsenal, and using them together had been a secret wet dream of Carn’s for quite some time. It was a bit early to go all out, but Carn absolutely could not wait to try this, so his clones took their claws and pounced on Wendy’s tummy, ribs and nipples while he stroked his own into her armpits. 

The effect was explosive. “EEEEEHEEHEEHEEHAHAHAHAHAHA! N-N-NAHAHAHEEHEE!” Wendy felt as though every nerve in her upper body was tingling within the first 15 seconds. And within a minute, they actually were. Every spot the claws touched tickled well after he moved on, and as a result. She found herself unable to speak instantly. More than that, though, she felt as if every square millimeter of her small breasts were being fondled and tickled all at once, and it got her extremely heated extremely quickly. In fact, it was probably a new record. Her body bucked with the desire to rub her nipples and girl spot against something, but all she got was more tickling. Not that that, mattered. It would be enough. It was always enough. And yet still, her body ached for more.

Carn too was in heaven. He’d started to think he’d never be able to give Wendy the ultimate tickling, and now here he was doing it. While she was wearing cat ears too! Every squeak and squeal, every jump and jerk, every poke and prod of the claws in her underarms--he loved all of it. He was curious, though, whether or not Wendy was enjoying it since she didn’t know it was him (silly boy), so he looked down to the telltale spot between her legs, a spot he usually tried to avoid looking at because, well, he didn’t want her noticing him doing it (she totally noticed him doing it). And sure enough the wet spot was there, and he took that as a sign that she was enjoying this just fine (blissfully unaware that that’s not always how it works). 

He actually started to get another idea--a truly, truly naughty idea--but he brushed it off at first, focusing instead on pushing Wendy to the brink of madness. She laughed and moaned and moaned and laughed, and at around the same time she could feel the “big happy” building up within her, she started drifting in and out of silent laughter. Carn took that as a sign that he needed to let her cool down--tickling her until she fainted was certainly a dream of his, but he didn’t want this to be over so soon--and backed away. But the lingering effects of the claws kept her going another minute longer, and she came while Carn wasn’t even touching her as a result.

While Wendy cooled down from the aftereffects of the claws, Carn--or rather, the Carns--decided to test out another idea they’d had. They took the feather tool that is supposed to be controlled psychically and tried working together to control it. One was too few, five proved too many, but when two Carns tried to control a feather in tandem, it proved quite easy and the feathers moved in to attack Wendy’s nipples at a speed he’d never achieved before.

“Eeheeheehee! No, no pleeheeheeheease! Dohohohohohohon’t! Nohohohot right nohohohow!” Wendy begged and pleaded to be left alone in her post-orgasm state, but she didn’t say the one thing that would’ve worked--Carn’s name. In this odd case, “Carn” was the unofficial safeword. All she needed to do was tell Carn she knew it was him and he would immediately get embarrassed and probably let her go, Wendy assumed. Still, the blue-haired dragon slayer cut herself off from doing that. Partly because she wanted to know just how far Carn would go. And also partly because the feathers on her nipples were already making her feel the heat again. Up until now, she’d never willingly submitted herself to a second “big happy” directly, relying on the unspoken rule for such things. This time, she dared herself not to try and stop it from happening no matter what.

Still, she hadn’t anticipated how far Carn would go with his curiosity. “Ah! W-w-wahahait! That’s eeheehee, Caaaahhh!” The boy had secretly longed to investigate that wet spot for a long, long time. He considered taking off Wendy’s bikini bottoms altogether, but he feared she’d hate him if he did and she found out he was the one responsible for all this. But surely if he was just touching it, that could possibly just be an accident, right? Right. So a worst case scenario could be avoided even if she did find out, the green-haired boy reasoned to himself.

This put Wendy in a tricky situation. She considered calling out the boy’s name multiple times, feeling like this was a border they’d been avoiding--a point of no return. But if she admitted she knew it was him, it would _definitely_ be a point of no return, so she held her tongue. And because she held her tongue, she had to endure this new invasion of privacy and the sensations that came with them.

Not that those sensations were bad. Far from it, she’d long wondered what would happen if Carn touched her down there during a tickling, and the result felt _amazing_. Every poke and prod and stroke and pet down there led to waves upon waves of pleasure spreading throughout her body, pleasure that mingled with the ticklish teasing of her nipples and made it hard to think about anything other than wanting _more_. Her body bucked into Carn’s fingers, trying to do something. Carn felt his fingers sink into some sort of gap every so often and was soon able to trace the outline of the gap in the panties, a little indent like a canyon between the legs, making him all the more curious what it really looked like. But whether because he was still too much of a coward or maintained at least that much gentlemanly deference, he resisted the temptation to take a peek underneath, instead simply following the canyon with his fingers from the bottom to the top.

The top, the _top_ , Wendy went practically ballistic at the top. That was the sweet spot, she knew, that she’d discovered during self-experimentation. And now Carn was finding it too. Noticing a shift from “No” to “Please” whenever he was touching a certain area at the top of the canyon, Carn started to focus on it, and Wendy felt another burst of ecstasy and collapsed back into motionlessness again. 

Wendy expected Carn to let her go at that point--he’d never pushed her past two “big happys” before. But on the other hand, Carn had never given a second one without pushing her to the point of near fainting before. This time was different. He hadn’t been going all out after the first one, so when she had the second she was actually comparatively well rested. Thus, Carn rationalized, she could keep going. Besides there were a couple of things he was curious to find out.

The feathers ceased their motion, but one of them dropped down into Carn’s hand. Rather than control it with his mind to tickle her nipples or armpits or belly or ribs or navel, he instead took it and slid it down the outside of the girl’s panties. Wendy let out a shriek like nothing he’d ever heard before. “EEEEYaaaahahaha! Ah! No! Aahahahaaaa!” It seemed like the feather did tickle down here, much as he hoped it might, though not as much as it sent the other feeling through her body. Oh well, this was fun in its own way. Plus, he didn’t plan on letting it be that simple.

At his signal, Carn’s four clones approached with fingers wiggling and attacked Wendy’s twice pleasure-wracked body from armpits to tummy. “AAAAHAHAHAHA! NOOOOHOHOHAHAHA! STAAAAH, AH, AHAHAHAHAHAP!” Her moans and laughs and pleas mingled into what Carn decided was quite possibly the most ideal state possible. With his free hand while the feather roamed around, he reached into his pants and started to finger himself as well, something he absolutely positively _never_ would have done if Wendy could see him. The sensation was altogether familiar and yet different; the waves of pleasure coursing through his own body being so much _more_ when accompanied by Wendy’s melodic, angelic squeals.

For Wendy, this was some combination of heaven and hell she’d never dreamed could exist in this world. The tickling was too much, far too much, insanely too much. And yet that feather--that _feather!_ \--she absolutely did not want that feather to stop no matter what. It flitted around aimlessly, not really paying much attention to where it was touching at first. But eventually, Carn decided to see if the sweet spot he’d discovered at the top would like the feather as much as it liked the fingers. At that point, Wendy felt a ticklish sensation unlike anything she’d ever thought possible. It wasn’t that it tickled more--or even the same--as her armpits or nipples, but it was intense in it’s own right, and it was accompanied with more of that addicting pleasure than anything she’d ever felt before.

She felt it coming for the third time--the “big happy” that she only allowed Carn to give her. Just a few more seconds, she felt and then… But it didn’t come. Carn, feeling the need to use two hands on _himself_ had moved the feather away leaving Wendy with only the ticklings of the clones on her armpits, nipples, ribs and tummy. Along with a burning, glaring, incredible sense of frustration.

“CAAAHAHAHAHAHARN!”

Both the clones and the original froze at the sound of his name. And in the absence of tickling, although she was panting heavily and must’ve been exhausted beyond imagining, in what could only be called a Fairy Tail-level bullshit second wind, Wendy was bucking and tugging on her restraints with a strength and fury the likes of which the boy had never seen before. “Put it back, put it back, hurry up, Carn!”

“Huh? Wait, you knew it was-”

“Of course I knew it was you, idiot, I could smell you the entire time!” Wendy yelled out quickly with a ferocity no one had ever thought her capable of. “Now put the feather back, _now!_ ”

The boy’s mind was reeling. She knew he’d been the one touching her? She knew he had touched her private spot? She was _telling_ him to… what?! “Wha- Wait, you want me to keep going?!”

**_“Yes!”_ **

“But that’s-”

**_“Sky Dragon-”_ **

“Okay, okay, I’m doing it!” Carn was shocked that Wendy was so adamant about this, but he’d never felt someone deny him at the peak of a top tier orgasm before. He couldn’t have known just how pissed it could make someone, even a gentle soul like Fairy Tail’s most kind-hearted dragon slayer. He _did_ know however, that when Wendy threatened to smash him with magic, she was serious. He’d learned that the hard way what felt like a long time ago now, on that day she was trying to _stop_ him from touching her someplace private.

So the boy, now with throbbing need of his own that he was scared to deal with (the fact that Wendy still couldn’t see him didn’t occur to him) picked the feather back up and placed it back where the desperate female wizard wanted it--right on top of her clit. And in that moment, something changed. “Yes! YES! YEHEHES AAAHN!” As the clones descended upon her once again, Carn felt that some new level of understanding had been reached. “CARN! AHAHA! CAAAAHRN! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!” The boy tapped the clone tickling in Wendy’s armpits and made it trade places with him. When he dug his fingers into that spot, he felt like she knew it was him. This was his spot; of course his fingers would be the ones tickling her armpits, of course he would be the one with his face in front of hers, of course he would be the one that, if she just leaned forward a bit…

“MMMMmmmm! 💙” There and then, on that day, as Wendy experienced her first third orgasm, the two kids shared their first kiss, and the fetish, temporarily, beyond the scope of any argument, stopped being innocent.

But it wouldn’t go any further than that for a long, long time…  
____________________________________________________________________________

After the incident at the tower, the other members of Fairy Tail were more vigilant of Carn and Wendy than ever, and the two were unable to find any opportunities to sneak away despite their best efforts. But that was fine. They both agreed that they needed to spend a bit more time with the others anyway lest they do something even more drastic than a fake kidnapping. Because of that, the two didn’t spend any more quality time together before the next major event.

But that event turned out to be a clash on Tenrou Island.

It happened suddenly, at the end of a great conflict. The mighty dragon Acnologia appeared at Tenrou Island and attempted to slaughter everyone on it. Because of the power of the great spell Fairy Heart, the dragon’s rampage was thwarted and Fairy Tail’s heavy-hitters survived. But while they were shielded from danger, five years passed for the outside world. Wendy was inside the shield. Carn was outside. Wendy didn’t age. Carn did. 

And so it was that when the lost members of Fairy Tail returned, both sides found a great many shocks. For those that thought the guild’s glory days were over and half their family were gone, it was a moment of celebration and relief, though also one of sadness at discovering how their comrades lost so much time without even knowing it. For those that had been frozen in time, it was as though they had left behind home day and returned to find it run down and ragged the next. The guild was devastated and bullied, their family older and generally less impressive.

But for Carn and Wendy, the deepest shock was the sudden age gap. Before she left, Wendy and Carn were both 12. Now the boy was 17, almost an adult. That presented a problem they didn’t know how to deal with.

Finding an opportunity to talk to each other about it was… difficult. There was the Grand Magic Games to deal with, after all. And everyone in the guild was even more wary of what the two might do together now that their age was even more of a questionable point than it had been before.

...No, that was an excuse. The truth was they didn’t know how to bring it up. Time passed, their relationship stagnated, and their guildmates stopped worrying something _would_ happen… and started worrying something _wouldn’t._  
____________________________________________________________________________

Then one day, after much time had passed, the two stumbled onto one another quite by accident.

“Oh my, fancy running into you here!”

Indeed, very much by accident…

“Oh, Carla, I actually needed to speak with you about something. Carn, I’m sorry, but could we cut practice short for today?”

If Carla and Pantherlily were to be believed, it was just a coincidence that while out for a walk Carla had _happened_ to lead Wendy out to where Pantherlily had taken to training the green-haired boy--pardon me-- _young man_ in the last month. 

Carn wasn’t buying it for a moment. He’d grown more observant of these sorts of things over the years, and there was no way this event wasn’t staged. Wendy seemed to know it too and was looking for an opportunity to slip away from him, he could tell. He didn’t blame her; he felt as awkward as she did. So he decided to save her the trouble of trying to make up an excuse to leave and do it himself. “My apologies, Wendy,” he said with a polite bow. “I actually have to keep training, so I think I’ll go meet up with Cana or maybe Gajeel.” 

These might sound like odd choices for training partners, but Carn had clearly hardened in the past five years. He was older and taller, of course, but he also had a scar on his face, some green fuzz on his chin, he carried a sword at his hip and he was wrapped in a brown outfit similar to Mystogan’s (but without his face being covered). Magic item training and sword skills were his fortes and he trained with those most likely to help with them.

Indeed, the fact that he was much more of a man now than he was five years ago was cruelly evident whenever Wendy looked at him. And as he turned to leave, she felt an unbearable pang of longing for what they once had. “Wait!” she called after him. He paused with his back still turned. But what should she say next? She stumbled over her words for a moment and then asked, “Could we… I mean, maybe instead we could… train together? Like we used to?”

The young man did not turn around. His response clearly came through gritted teeth as he clenched a hand to stop it from shaking. “We can’t.” He meant to leave it at that and walk away dramatically, severing the connection forever. But he couldn’t quite stop himself from saying more. “I’m going to be an adult next year, Wendy. You’re still a kid. I’m too old for you.”

“I don’t care!” Wendy yelled back, feeling a dam burst on her emotions. “I… I love you, Carn…!”

The swordsman didn’t turn around. He cruelly responded, “I don’t. I’ve moved on and grown up.” Wendy looked down at the ground. “I like women my own age now.” She started to walk over to him with her fists clenched as well. “Not to mention, I like girls with big boobs, and you don’t have those.” That one hurt, as it was intended to. But still, Wendy resolutely walked in front of him, raised her head, met Carn’s poker face with a glare and… 

...raised her sleeveless arms over her head. “Prove it.” 

Carn’s face immediately reddened. He tried to avert his eyes, yelling, “P-p-put those down! S-s-someone could be watching.” But it was a shallow excuse given Wendy’s dragon slayer nose. No one was watching. Carla had _ensured_ no one was watching. And on top of that, the man’s eyes, though they darted this way and that, inevitably bounced back to the dragon slayer’s armpits again and again.

“I knew it. You _do_ still want them,” Wendy said, her own face an odd mixture of expressions. She was puffy-faced and angry, her cheeks were red mostly from embarrassment, her eyes were tearing up with sadness and relief simultaneously, and her pose remained as it was--a quite out-of-place sensual one given the storm of feelings inside her. “And don’t tell me you like big boobs. I know you. You don’t like big boobs.”

Carn felt like that last part was added more because of her own insecurity than because she was actually sure of it. But she _had_ effectively cornered and caught him. “Alright, fine, yes, I do still have feelings for you. Of course I do. But _we can’t be together._ It won’t-” 

Carn’s complaints were silenced by something unexpectedly bold: Wendy grabbing his scarf, and pulling him down where she could kiss him on the lips. “I. Don’t. Care.” It was the sort of action he never expected from her, but the look on her face, with tears now flowing freely, told him it was her last act of desperation. If he pushed her away now… that would be it. It would be over.

…

…

…

Carn reached out and stroked Wendy’s hair longingly. He looked down, looked back at her, and looked down again. “If we do this… it won’t be like it was before. I know more about how this stuff works now.” Wendy said nothing. She stared him in the eyes and waited for him to make up his mind. Finally, with a sigh, Carn said, “Come on.”  
____________________________________________________________________________  
The old familiar spot in the woods the two used to “train” in hadn’t changed much. At least there was the tree with the overhanging branch that Wendy would be tied to, just as it always was, and it was still silent and secluded, and those were really the only details that had been especially important. Like they always did when they came out here, Wendy stripped off her dress and sandals, leaving her only in panties.

That was where Carn made the first change. “That one too.” And he pointed to those panties.

“Eh?” Wendy’s face reddened greatly, and she shoved a hand between her legs protectively. “Th-th-th-that’s--!”

“Normal,” Carn interrupted. He started to remove his own clothing as well, revealing well-toned but not excessive muscle and hair. “It’s normal for boyfriend and girlfriend to take off _everything_ at times like this.” He paused with his hand on his boxers and looked at Wendy with a face that seemed at once challenging and unexpectant. “I’m not a kid anymore. I want to see _all_ of my girlfriend, not _most_ of her. And I want the same vice-versa.”

The implication was simple. He hadn’t accepted that this could work out yet. Wendy’s mind wasn’t developed enough to go along with- “Fine!” In a huff, her face beat red but also resolute, the blue-haired girl pulled the panties down, revealing what was underneath. Now it was Carn’s turn to be flustered as she said, “There. Your turn. Do it.” And reluctantly, having had his bluff called, the young man pulled off his own underwear as well.

Tying up Wendy had been awkward for the two of them many, many times before. But _never_ as awkward as when they were both naked as the day they were born. Wendy was staring with something between fascination, distaste and just plain shock at the weird, pointy thing between Carn’s legs the whole time and he in turn had to struggle to stay focused on his task and not do the same to her. On top of that, Carn had apparently gotten a lot better with his magic rope, not settling for merely tying Wendy’s arms overhead, but also lifting her feet off the ground so that they were suspended face up behind her while also keeping her legs spread. 

It all happened in something of a daze, and when the setup was finished, only then did Carn realize just how many lines they’d crossed and how irreversible the situation was. But Wendy’s face was still stubbornly expectant and as he gazed at her--still as radiant and beautiful as the day he met her in a completely different world--he finally threw hesitation to the wind. _Screw it; I can’t say “No” to her._

He walked over to her unarmed. “You’re not using any tools today?” Wendy asked in a hushed tone, clearly still dazed herself.

Carn shook his head. “No… No, I think after all this time, I should just use my fingers. I… I want to remember what you feel like.” It sounded creepy to him when he heard it out loud, but it was the truth, and judging from the way Wendy nodded her assent, she seemed to feel the same way. So he raised his fingers, his much longer fingers, and placed them on her soft-and-delicate-looking sides. Then finally, for the first time in over five years, he started to tickle her.

“Hm! Hmhm! Eeheehee!” Wendy’s giggles were small at first. Carn was holding back, but when he started to hear that old, familiar, beautiful sound, his fingers naturally started to regain their former skill. “Eeheeheehee! AhahahaHAHAHAHAHAHA!” Overcome by a passion he’d forgotten--a passion he’d _buried_ deep inside himself--Carn’s fingers drilled their way up the girl’s sides and into her armpits. Her beautiful, soft, mesmerizing, adorable, irresistibly ticklish armpits. 

“Wendy…” The name slipped out of his mouth in a near whisper, as if he was just now recognizing her. Then he did what he’d wanted to do again every day since that day at the tower; he bent over and kissed her. A long and passionate kiss while his hands tormented her armpits. To any outside observer who might catch them at this moment, the whole situation would look like child abuse of the highest order, but to them, it was the culmination of everything they’d wanted, everything they thought they’d lost, and everything they never wanted to lose again. “Wendy,” he said again, pulling back from the kiss. “I… I love you.”

Panting as the older teen gave her a break so she could respond, Wendy started to cry again, but this time with a smile on her face, one flushed with passion and giggliness yet somehow also moved and content. “I love you too, Carn. I always will.”  
____________________________________________________________________________

The passage of time changes things yet also keeps them the same in unfathomable ways. If two should truly love each other in the end and are clearly meant to be together, then was their fetish innocent from start to finish? Or perhaps if their love should start from a fetish, it was never innocent in the first place? Did it start innocent and end guilty? Or start guilty and end innocent? Wendy and Carn would never have an answer to these questions. Nor would it matter. What mattered was that they and their love of tickling would be together forever.

**Author's Note:**

> This work was commissioned from me via my DeviantArt/Discord account. If you like what you see and want more--or if you don't like what you see and want something different--feel free to contact me and place a commission. Pricing is $5 for every 300 words. Full details on my DA account under the same username.


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